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Time to Yank it Off?

I have many sellers that have their homes for sale in Wake Forest NC ask me this very question. They want to know if they should take their home off the market and wait until next year to put it back on the market. I have to ask – WHY? Why lose a valuable year of your life only to re-enter the market next year at a potentially more volatile time?

My colleague, Leslie Ebersole, has a great blog post with a few quote from the experts as to their thoughts on the housing market next year. You might be surprised what some of the statistics show…….

“We think maybe we should pull the house off the market and wait until next year…?“ Many of our sellers are opening their weekly reports and wondering if waiting until next year would get them a higher price. Showing activity has dropped off and the number of price changes on hotsheets far outnumbers any new sales. Sellers are frustrated after a long hot summer of keeping the house clean and showing ready. We know we’ve been doing great marketing, so if the house is in good shape and staged to perfection, then price drops are the only thing left to do to get the house sold.

So is yanking the listing off the market a good idea? Probably not.

Patrick Newport, an economist for IHS Global Insights, expects median existing home prices to fall another 8 percent or so before bottoming out in the first quarter of next year. From there, he expects prices to begin a slow and fitful climb.

Yesterday I came across a blog post from Steve Harney that addresses this very issue. Steve clearly states that the experts he follows believe that it will be at least two years before the drop in housing prices stabilizes. Steve concludes his post with this recommendation:

“If you are thinking of waiting for the market to show appreciation before selling your home, you have a two year wait not a one year wait. And if you are looking for double digit appreciation, it is five years away. Perhaps it is best to sell now and get on with the things in your life that caused you to think about moving in the first place”.

……Is there any evidence that the market will come roaring back next spring? The evidence actually points to the exact opposite. Most experts are predicting that we will not see appreciation until the end of 2012 and even then the appreciation will be minimal…

……“The consensus indicates diminished confidence in the prospects for a near term recovery … This month, 60% of the panelists projected negative home price growth for 2010.”That percentage was up from 40% just two months ago!

……The experts are predicting that cumulative appreciation will not reach positive numbers until the end of 2012 and will still be under 10% by 2014.

This post was written by Leslie Ebersole of Baird & Warner Real Estate.

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